Web notes from Benjamin Whitmer

I know one paper that won’t be reviewing this one

Just in time for the Rocky Mountain News’ disintegration, one of their victims, Ward Churchill, is featured in a book detailing the Rocky and their ilk’s manner of smear. From the press release.

In a landmark undertaking, IUP English Professor David B. Downing and Literature and Criticism doctoral candidate Edward J. Carvalho have developed what some in the profession are referring to as “the definitive collection on academic freedom.” In February 2009, the nearly 600-page Works and Days double-volume Academic Freedom and Intellectual Activism in the Post-9/11 University will be available for national distribution. The collection, guest-edited by Carvalho, features 28 contributors from various disciplines including such luminaries as race scholar Cornel West, worldrenowned intellectual Noam Chomsky, Constitutional Law Professor Derrick Bell, Pulitzer finalist Martín Espada, academic freedom specialist Bob O’Neil, and AAUP President Cary Nelson, among many others.

Additionally, highly controversial and embattled Professors Ward Churchill and Norman Finkelstein join the list of contributors to provide the Works and Days readership with statements related to their respective academic freedom battles. Ahead of his federal trial pending for March 9, 2009, Professor Churchill has chosen to publish in Works and Days what can only be described as an historic document. Totaling nearly 90 pages and using more than 400 endnotes to buttress his essay, Churchill provides a meticulously detailed account—the only one of its kind—of his experiences confronting the machinations of politicians, media, and the Colorado Board of Regents, which conspired to successfully strip him of his tenured professorship. Similarly, Professor Finkelstein, who recently lost what many believe to be a secularly influenced and protracted battle for tenure with DePaul University, has written about his circumstances.

Here’s a link to the _Works and Days_ subscription form. The best thing to do here would be to take advantage of the presymposium discount rate for the academic freedom volume ($12 instead of $15 for individual copies). As soon as the double-issue returns from production (early Feb.), we’ll get that out in the mail to you straightaway.